Googiliness
by GlitteringSnow
Summary: So it turned out that this really wasn't the average internship, throw in an oddball group of geeks along with two old guys who keep saying on the line and one super creepy British dude, yeah, this was gonna be great. Stuart/OC
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

I watched in annoyance as another huge group of interns walked into the hall. Great, I thought to myself, more people to compete with. There were already so many interns that I was beginning to get nervous about my chances of getting a job here.

Google was such an amazing place to work, from what little I'd seen of the place I could already tell that this was somewhere I could see myself work here, this was somewhere I could really grow as a programmer. I looked down in annoyance at the stupid multicoloured hat I'd been given, shoving it into my bag and making my way through the unrelenting crowd.

My stomach rumbled, reminding me that I hadn't eaten breakfast this morning due to nerves. I stretched onto my tiptoes to see where I could find food and wasn't disappointed when I saw a cafe. I started off in that direction and quickly got into line behind some old guy. He was nervously bouncing from foot to foot as he glanced around, he caught my eye and attempted to give me a smile. I decided to be nice for once and smiled back.

Unfortunately he took this as an invitation to start talking to me. "There's a lot of people here, huh?"

I tutted and looked behind me, feeling irritated as I decided there was no way I could get out of this without leaving the line, and there was no way I could do that without my stomach ache rumbling throughout the rest of the day. I sucked in a breath through my teeth before turning back to him. "Yeah, well it is Google." I drawled, nodding my head slowly and awkwardly, feeling more and more irritated the longer this guy looked at me.

He chuckled and nodded, rubbing the back of his head. "It sure is, listen do you-" Thankfully whatever he was about to ask me was interrupted by the cashier calling for the next in line, which happened to be him. He smiled apologetically before going up to the counter. From this point I decided to ignore him and reached for my phone that was in my back pocket, a bad habit I had but couldn't break. Trust me, I'd tried but my phone always seemed to make its way back there. It's like I had a magnet on my ass.

Unlocking the screen I decided to snap a picture and post it on Facebook and twitter to make my limited number of friends and followers jealous.

**First day at Google, not too shabby.**

I would have come up with something better but the old guy had finished clearing out the cafe and was walking away with his arms full of food and drink, I shook my head in amusement and walked forward to order a bagel and tea. I fumbled with my bag in an attempt to find my purse.

"Don't worry love, I've got it." A British voice came out of nowhere, making me look up from my bag. A boy was standing in front of me, smirking. It had clearly been him speaking but from one look I knew he wasn't someone I wanted to be friends with. Something about the way he was looking at me made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. I was about to deny him when he cashier called over to to in an exasperated voice. "It's free!"

I raised an eyebrow in surprise, clearly someone had been saying those words all day but I wasn't complaining, I reached past the British boy to grab sugars, a small pot of milk and a stirrer stick. As I pulled back I noticed that the boy had closed his eyes, I pursed my lips in slight disgust as I noticed he was taking deep breaths through his nose.

"Did you just-" I began incredulously.

His eyes slammed open. "No! No! I wasn't doing anything." He raised his hands, maybe to touch me but I didnt stick around to find out. "Come back!" I rolled my eyes and hurried through the door, trying to get as far away from the creep as possible. I found myself walking back into the foyer not entirely sure of where I was supposed to be going.

Finally however I figured out the way to a room where a lot of interns were, checking my phone for the timetable and making sure I was actually in the right place. I stood on my tiptoes once again to try and find a seat there weren't very many places left. I had a choice of the old guy from earlier, some really fat kid, a guy who was compulsively texting and a small blonde girl who was biting her nails.

I had stood there for too long and someone had sat next to the blonde so I made my way over to the guy who was texting. He didn't even look up as I sat down and that suited me just fine. Since I was sat at the edge of the row I had a better opportunity to see the rest of the interns, twisting to see those behind me I quickly regretted it as I saw the creepy guy from earlier was making his way down to where I sat.

I sighed and buried my head in my hands. "Oh crap." Phone bow glanced over at me with a frown, twisting in his seat to see what was happening before snorting under his breath. I sneered at him. "Shut up." I hissed at him, feeling an immediate rush of hatred towards him and the creep who was steadily moving towards me. I thought about making a run for it but it was too late at this point. I was resigned to my fate.

"Hi again." I rolled my eyes at the British voice and pretended I couldn't hear him. "Excuse me. Hello?" I jumped when I felt a tap on my shoulder and reluctantly took my eyes off of phone boy's smirk before turning to the creep. He smiled innocently at me and leant his hand on the back of my chair, which brought him into closer contact then I would have liked. I suddenly regretted wearing this dress as I could have sworn I saw him trying to get a look down it, I shifted uncomfortably under the weight of his stare.

Finally I cracked. "Can I help you with something?" I asked irritably.

He grinned wider, the glare from his teeth practically hitting me in the eye. "I'm sure you could." He murmured, l scoffed and pushed him away.

"Whatever you're thinking its not happening." I smiled sweetly at him before turning my attention to the guy next to me. "Would you mind switching places with me?" He took his attention from his phone and sighed, obviously as irritated by me as I was by this creep.

Before he could reply the creep caught my attention again, making me miss the way phone boy was glancing appreciatively at my legs and chest before heading back to his phone and typing a bit more frantically than before.

"Listen I'm sorry, can we start over? I think we got off on the wrong foot." He smiled again but I was done listening to him.

"No thanks. Can you go back to your seat please and dont talk to me again." It may have seemed a bit harsh but I wasn't one to give second chances, his creepiness wasn't going to fade and I wasn't here to make friends or anything else. Plus my instincts were usually right and they were screaming at me o get away from this guy.

Phone guy snorted again, this time loud enough for both me and the creep to hear. Creep turned to him and sneered. "I would have thought a loser like you had other things to do than eavesdrop on private conversations."

I blinked in extreme irritation."This isn't a private conversation, this is a rejection. Now go back to your seat." I hissed. This guy just wasn't taking a hint.

He narrowed his eyes at me and leant closer, making me hit the back of my head on the chair and groan in annoyance and slight pain as I tried to move my face away from his. "The names Graham sweetheart. Make sure you remember it." And with that the creep finally decided to leave me in peace. I rubbed the back of my head with a frown and slumped down in my chair, pulling the bottom of my dress down a bit more as I did so.

"I'll remember it when I file for a restraining order." I muttered. Phone boy glanced over at me again and seemed about to say something when everyone's attention was drawn to the front of the room.

An Indian man stood in front of us, scanning our faces and seemingly looking for something inspiring. I don't think he found it from his unimpressed facial expression. "I am Roger Chetty." He introduced himself, hands behind his back as he paced up and down. "I am head of the Google Intern Program. Welcome to Google. This will not be your average internship, oh no. You will do what we do, and we will watch how well you do it. Now, you represent the finest schools, your intelligence and achievement is well noted." Mr Chetty's eyes scanned over us again and when his eyes met mine I gulped. "But to excel as this internship you're going to need far more than brain power. What you're going to need Googilness."

Everyone chuckled at this except it seems, me and phone boy who was still periodically checking his phone, I smiled when I saw he got a text from his mother. I looked back to the front before he saw me looking.

Chetty's face was unamused at the chuckles. "Nothing funny. Googilness. The intangible stuff that made a search engine into an engine for change. Now you'll be divided into teams and by the end of the summer only one team will be guaranteed a full-time position. The other 95% of you... Will not." He smiled grimly. "Now you've been split into several seminars to acquaint you with our campus and culture. Seminar descriptions have been emailed to each of you. I would wish you luck, but it's not luck that you need. Get to work."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

There was an immediate rush as everyone decided it was a good idea to get up and try to leave the room at the same time. Obviously there ended up being a massive queue for the door so I, being quite close to the front of the room, was near the back of the queue, instead of getting annoyed at this fact I counted my blessings when I saw that Graham was stuck in the middle of an obese guy and what appeared to be a non-stop talker in the form of a small brunette female.

I laughed under my breath even though I was in a similar situation, although I didn't mind being pressed right up against phone boy's chest. He smirked down at me, quickly getting distracted as his phone buzzed. I rolled my eyes as I caught sight of the text he was replying to.

_**To: Stuart**_

_**From: Austin**_

_**Hey man, any fit girls at Google? Cause you know you owe me for that thing with Steve...**_

_**To: Austin**_

_**From: Stuart**_

_**You would die if you were in my situation right now, this one is definitely too hot for you man. Gonna try for myself.**_

I hoped to God he was talking about the girl behind me who was compulsively biting her fingernails. Still, I thought with a sigh and a glance towards Graham, it was better than the alternatives. Slowly, oh so slowly, we inched forwards as the people in front managed to squeeze their way through the door, however due to the amount of people that were behind me meant that I was still in a close proximity to phone boy, whose name, according to his texts was Stuart.

Not the name I would have thought for him. I frowned as one of his elbows dug into my back as he got another text, after a few more painful minutes later where his elbow continued to give me the most painful massage ever I'd had enough. Twisting around was difficult but I managed it, giving Stuart an annoyed look as I pushed his arm away from my back.

"Do you mind?" I hissed over the rabble of voices as we still inched forwards. He didn't seem to notice that I was talking to him and I looked over to see what he was texting, pursing my lips in anger as I saw he had taken a picture of my bottom and was sending it to his friend. I snatched the phone away from him, scowling furiously as I tapped out my own message on his phone.

_**To: Mom**_

_**From: Stuart**_

_**Hello Stuart's mother, your son was just caught sending this picture of me to one of his friends, I hope you understand why he comes home without the ability to reproduce.**_

_**[Image sent ]**_

And with that I pressed send, shoving the phone back at him and ignored his shocked blinking, his mouth opening and closing without saying a word.

"Do you have anything to say for yourself? Because right now you're on the same level of creepiness as Graham." I spoke in a furious whisper, my knee was itching to connect with a certain body part.

"I heard my name." I scoffed in annoyance as of course this would happen, Graham smirked at Stuart before trying to wrap an arm around my waist. "I knew you couldn't resist me."

I sneered before realised I was at the front of the queue and hurriedly tried to put as much distance between me and those two creeps as possible. Graham was nothing if not persistent however. "Yes, because I said your name that must mean I'm madly in love with you." I pushed his face away and scowled again. "Get away from me weirdo."

Luckily for the other guy, Graham took my mind of my plan to kick him in the balls, and actually made me forget what he'd done in the first place. I had to duck into a random building and into an empty room to get him off my tail. I let out a sigh, finding myself growing increasingly annoyed at the situation I was finding myself in. Why did I have to meet Graham? I must have done something in a former life to get this sort of punishment. I just didn't know what it was.

I opened my eyes, unsure of when I'd closed them and looked at the room I'd managed to stumble into. At first glance it seemed like a normal office but if you looked a little closer you could see the small touches that showed it's occupant was slightly if not completely crazy. There was a rubix cube tower in the corner, suspended above it was a model helicopter that's blades spun lazily, threatening to fall with every turn. I grimaced at the state of the desk, taking my eyes away from the mess quickly before I had the urge to go over and clean it. What caught my attention the most however, was a pair of seemingly innocent glasses that were perched on a separate desk.

I frowned as I peered at them, noticing that there was something different about them but not sure what. "Google glasses." I heard from behind me, sending me into a state of panic at being caught somewhere I shouldn't be. The man who had spoken was scruffy looking, with a beard and headphones around his neck, he was not smiling which made me feel more uncomfortable than I was.

"What?" I asked, avoiding eye contact with him. He sighed before walking past me and over to the glasses picking them up and holding them to his face to peer through one of the lenses.

"These are Google glasses. The first prototype that I was entrusted with."

I nodded pretending that I knew what he was talking about. "And what do Google glasses do?"

He tilted his head, looking at me with an expression of interest. "What do any glasses do?"

I let out an uncomfortable laugh. "Fair enough. I'll just get out of your office." I motioned with my thumb the doorway behind me and smiled again at the strange man before taking my leave.

"It isn't my office." I heard from behind me.

I turned around again when I reached the doorway. "Oh. Well I'm probably late for something anyway." I blinked when I realised this was probably true and reached into my jean pocket to fish out my phone and quickly looked for the email that held my schedule. "Oh man! Can you tell me where this room is?" I held the phone up for him to take, waiting for him to do something.

He took the phone from me and pursed his lips, nodding gently at me before giving the phone back and walking past me through the door. "Hurry, we have five minutes." I winced and scampered after him. He led the way through the building, thankfully I'd managed to choose one that was quite close to where I needed to be, Headphones stopped in front of one of the other rooms and nodded at the door.

"Thank you, I owe you one." He waved off my gratitude and walked away. I stared incredulously at his back before shaking my head and opening the door. Thankfully I actually had managed to be on time so there were still seats for me to choose from. Even better was the fact that Graham wasn't in here. I smiled and sat in one of the seats in the middle, not paying attention to anyone I was near or I would have noticed the guy who had been in front of me at the cafe wave to me. I sat just in front of them, taking my phone out of my back pocket just before I did so.

I heard whispering behind me and because I had a few minutes before the class was going to start I eavesdropped. "Dude who were you waving to? I didn't know you'd made any friends?" The voice had a distinct southern drawl that I was sure to remember.

"Well we aren't friends per say, acquaintances at best, I mean, I don't know her name but I'm sure we could be really good friends and that's something I'm looking forward to." I recognised the voice and kept myself from sighing, I really hope he wasn't talking about me.

I stretched my feet in front of me before folding them in an attempt to be somewhat ladylike. A voice sounded from the seat next to me, making me jump in surprise as I hadn't noticed someone else sit down. "Hey, about earlier," I turned to see phone boy had decided to sit next to me, his phone sat on his lap and his stupid beanie on his head. "I'm not, you know, a creep or anything." I raised an eyebrow and leant closer to him, noticing him gulp as I did so.

"You know," I drawled. "People who have to say they arent creeps, are usually creeps." I backed away from him as Mr Chetty walked into the room.

"Did you see that?" I heard the southern guy whisper behind me.

"That was some serious sexual tension, I can feel it from here." I cast an annoyed scowl behind me as Mr Chetty clapped his hands to get our attention, causing me to cast my eyes back to the front. Stuart seemed to have heard what they said as well as instead of listening to Mr Chetty he turned his attention to his phone, his ears burning under his beanie.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

"Hello and welcome to your first seminar, you should find on the floor under your seat two paddles." Mr Chetty held up his own as everyone reached under their seats. I shifted forwards until I was able to bend over to reach under my own seat, making awkward eye contact with Stuart as I did so. I rolled my eyes and sat back up, the two paddles safely in my hands. "You should find one is red and the other is green, please raise your hand if you do not have the two colours."

No one raised their hands so Mr Chetty nodded in satisfaction before pressing a button on the remote he held in his hand which started the presentation, the words WORKPLACE SEMINAR emblazoned on the first page.

"Now I recognise that Google is not the most convention workplace." I withheld a snort. "Having said that, we have rules. I am going to ask you a series of questions, you're going to raise the green paddle to indicate yes and the red paddle to indicate no. So let's begin." He moved from the centre to the side as he clicked the button again and the next page came up.

"Having a beer with your boss?" He read, immediately my hand with the red paddle shot up. I straightened my back as he looked over at me but apparently it wasn't me he was looking at. It was the two older men behind me. I didn't have to look around to know they were the only two who had gotten the question wrong. I cast a side glance at Stuart to find he was looking as bored as I felt, his phone was on his lap which meant that even he wasn't stupid enough to incur the wrath of Mr Chetty, something I was sure was something to be feared.

"Some of you are under 21." Mr Chetty continued, seemingly not going to tell the two men they were wrong or at least he was trying to ignore them.

I rolled my eyes when I heard the voice behind me speak up. He didn't know when to stay quiet did he? "Some of us aren't under 21, so if you want to grab a cold one with me, I'm happy to do that with you."

I sucked in my bottom lip, both irritated and trying not to laugh at this man's idiocy. Mr Chetty had narrowed his eyes and even though I knew he wasn't looking at me it still made me look down at my hands to avoid his gaze. "I will not be grabbing a cold one with you."

"You get high?" I took in a deep breath slowly, unsure if I'd heard what I'd actually heard.

If it was possible Mr Chetty's eyes narrowed even more, I couldn't actually tell if he was pissed off or amused, I believe it was a little of both. "I don't get high."

"Okay. I'm not judging. Just saying. People do it." I jumped when he then moved forwards to stick his face next to mine, both Stuart and I were extremely creeped out when he started talking. "That being said if you want something cold to drink we'll hook you up okay?"

I shook my head in disbelief. "What even?" I said slowly and quietly.

"I'm okay." Stuart spoke, trying not to make eye contact although we did exchange an incredulous look. "Thank you, just stop talking to me." He tilted his head away from the older man.

"What about you?" I opened and closed my mouth without answered, unsure if this was actually happening.

"She's fine too." Stuart nodded at me.

"I'm your Bill Holden in Stalag 17."

Stuart looked completely bemused, eyes narrowed and mouth open. "I don't even. I really don't get that reference." He crosses his arms and pursed his lips.

"Google it."

"Go it." Stuart rolled his eyes and when he saw that I was looking at him, he nodded his head to the two men behind us and I smiled uncomfortably, gently turning my head to peer at them. They didn't seem to think they didn't belong here. I shook my head and turned back to Mr Chetty as he turned to the next slide.

"Dating a fellow intern?" Again I raised the red paddle, not noticing the look I got from the boy next to me as he slowly and lazily lifted his own red paddle up. When Mr Chetty looked over in my direction again I knew the two men behind me had chosen the wrong answer once more. Didn't they understand the concept of lying? I sighed to myself and peered over at Stuart as Mr Chetty started talking to the older men once more. "This is Google, not "

It was strange that he was probably the closest thing to a friend that I had in this place.

"Taking food home from the office?" I raised the red paddle again, snorting softly when the same thing happened again.

"Are you having trouble with this Mr McManus?" I wondered which one of them that was. Thankfully my phone buzzed at this point which allowed me to tune out the rest of their painful conversation, I occasionally heard random foods listed but shoved that out of my mind as I started texting.

**To: Me**

**From: Sasha**

**So, what's it like at Google? x**

**To: Sasha**

**From: Me**

**Boring. Two old guys made it into the program somehow and one of them is getting owned by the Head of the program lol x**

I put my phone down in time to put up my red paddle again, luckily for me I was able to keep an ear out on the conversation so didn't make a huge fool out of myself although I doubt anyone would be as far on the bad side of Mr Chetty than this Mr McManus guy.

**To: Me**

**From: Sasha**

**Aha, have you made any friends yet?**

I rolled my eyes at the inevitable question and shoved my phone back into my pocket when Mr Chetty dismissed us, I pushed my hair out of my face and before I could get into a conversation with anyone I hurried out of the door. Since that was the only thing other than orientation on my list of things to do today I decided to go get some dinner before heading to the accommodation that Google had been generous enough to give us.

"I'm telling you man, we just have to surround ourselves with the right group of these little weirdo's-" I rolled my eyes at the old guys and pulled a jacket out of my bag, cursing when it pulled out the stupid noogler hat and a bunch of pens and papers. I stooped down to grab everything when another hand appeared out of nowhere to pick up my papers. I gathered the errant pens and stood, picking up the stupid noogler hat as well and looked up with a smile to thank the person for helping me.

"Really?" I groaned, smile forgotten as Graham stood in front of me, grinning with my papers trapped between his grubby hands. "I seriously feel like you're stalking me now." I reached a hand out for him to give me my notebook but he tilted his head and smiled instead.

"Is that how you treat someone who's being nice to you?"

I rolled my eyes. "Yes. I'm a horrible person, now give that back and leave me alone." I reached forwards to try and grab it but narrowed my eyes when he jerked backwards out of my reach, that stupid grin still firmly in place. "You know what, keep it." With a smile of my own I turned around and walked away. I wasn't going to spend more time than necessary trying to get back a stupid note book that I probably wouldn't even need.

I decided to order some take out to my accommodation, with that thought in mind I made my way over there. I pushed the door open and threw my keys on the bed, grabbing my phone and dialling the number of a pizza place that I had the leaflet to. Something I'd been handed by a random passer-by earlier.

Quickly placing my order I threw my phone gently on my bed and followed it, flopping onto my back and sighing loudly. Finally, I was alone and there were no creeps around to annoy me, this was the life. My heaven was interrupted by a knock on the door, I sat up and narrowed my eyes knowing that it was far too quick for the pizza to be here. I doubt they would even be allowed in the building, I'd most likely have to go down and pay.

Another knock sounded and I got up to peer through the peephole, not being able to recognise the person on the other side so I cautiously answered it.

"Hello?" I asked with a frown. The person looked up and I let out a slight sigh of relief when I recognised the person as Stuart, he'd angled his face so that his beanie blocked out his features and that's why I hadn't known who he was. "What do you want?"

He sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Listen about earlier, I promise I'm not a creep. You caught me at a bad time."

"A bad time?" I snorted. "Listen, I know I'm stunning and all but seriously? You have no game."

He reared back a bit with a frown, offended. "I have no game? I have game." He corrected strongly, leaning forwards to peer down at me.

"Yeah? Then how come you're not getting anywhere with me?" I smirked.

"Wow someone has a big ego." He commented, smirking back at me. "Who said I wanted to get anywhere with you?"

I raised an eyebrow. "You did. To your friend."

He blinked. "Oh yeah." He shuffled his feet in embarrassment. "Well I take it back."

I smirked again and stepped forwards, intruding on his personal space and peered up at him under my eyelashes. "Really?" I bit my lip and leant closer, he gulped, eyes flickering down to stare at my lips.

He bent his head to meet my lips with his own but I stepped back before he could, causing him to stumble. He blinked rapidly, his face becoming red as he saw that he'd been played.

"I somehow doubt that." My phone started ringing on my bed and I gave him one last smirk before bounding over to it, my pizza was here. I'd left the door open so Stuart was still there when I hung up.

"Where are you going?" He asked curiously, leaning on the door frame. I looked up at him before locking my door, making sure I had money with me.

"I'm going to get my pizza." I said slowly, leaving him there watching me as I walked away. I suppose I could get used to having him around.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: Thank you IrisstoneHPfan for telling me about the little editing problem that I had going on. You're awesome.  
><strong>

**Chapter Four**

I woke up with a feeling of dread. Today was the day where we were supposed to pick our teams and that meant I had to find four or five other people to work with. It was not going to be fun for me. At all.

I was always picked last.

With a sigh I shoved the warm comforter off my body and rolled out of bed, yawning loudly as I stretched and walked into the bathroom. Time to put my battle dress on. My battle dress turned out to be a dark purple sundress that I decided was good enough. My worn converse were the only accessories I needed and with that and a bag to put my keys and phone in I was off.

I made my way over to the bigger hall we were told to meet in, positioning myself on the edge of the row as I was quickly surrounded by those who'd made friends with one another and promptly ignored my existence. I scowled at the nearest person to me who quickly became silent to the worry of their friend. Oops.

I didn't have long to be in a mood however as one of the men stood up quickly introducing himself as Sid. I could tell he was going to say something heartwarming about us picking out teams or something along those lines and so apparently could Mr Chetty as he stole the microphone from Sid. "You have 5 minutes, pick your team."

This was the moment I was dreading. I stood up and looked at all the people that were running to the people they knew so that they could have a friendly and familiar face to go through this experience with. My eyes widened in shock at how everyone jumped up and scurried around trying to find other people to join their team, I suppose I would have been the same had it not been for Graham heading towards me. As I hurried to hide from him, I missed how Stuart had turned to me and his eyes followed me as I ran away. Those same eyes narrowed in anger as they watched Graham chase after me.

"Excuse me, out of my way." My eyes widened in horror as I heard the voice of Graham swiftly making its way over to me.

"Crap." I hissed, taking this moment to shove some people away from me and hide from the Brit who was still pushing his way through people to find me. I knew this for a fact as he was actually calling my name, but he was stopped by some unfortunately large boy who Graham scowled at.

I felt sorry for that kid.

In those five minutes I was running away from Graham I'd spent the majority of that hiding behind the two older men, whom I knew Graham wouldn't go near. The only problem with this tactic was that I had to hide from them as well. No one else would go with them and this was obviously making them desperate.

I had that same desperation not to be a part of Graham's team. He would drive me insane.

I ducked and weaved around the two old guys whose names escaped me at this moment as one tried to pull me into a hug. "Sorry got to dash." I apologised, risking a look behind me to see that Graham had acquired some team members and he was directing them towards me. "Crap." For the rest of the five minutes I could be found dodging around the groups and occasionally being called out to by Graham, the group of Googlers who were going to be mentoring us had their eyes fixed on me and I could swear that the majority of them found my plight amusing.

It seemed as though I'd left it too long to actually find myself part of a group however as Graham finally gave up and instead chose some blonde chick "on account of her physical appearance" and that was his team full.

But now I was stuck with the rejects, which unfortunately mean that I was a self-inflicted reject. An upside to this was that my good friend Stuart was also in my group. I bounded down the remaining stairs to where he was sat, still on the godforsaken phone and sat next to him.

"Hey buddy." I grinned at him, turning to look at the front of the room to make sure that Chetty wasn't about to start talking before turning back to him.

He narrowed his eyes at me in suspicion before returning his gaze back to his phone. "Are you being nice to me right now? Is that what's happening?"

I snorted. "Well I could be mean to you if you want." I leaned a little closer, enjoying the way his breath hitched. "I didn't know you liked that sort of thing."

He gulped and looked across at me, about to reply but our attention was called elsewhere. The only more senior member left to mentor us was a geeky nervous looking guy who first approached the two older guys and then called out to the rest of us.

"Look let's get a team meet going everybody. Come on team meet time." He fist pumped the air as we slowly moved towards him and followed him into a different room. I decided to take the sofa, falling onto it softly, feeling my skirt rise as I did so which made me rearrange as I sat up properly. Stuart sat down next to me, pausing to give me an unidentifiable look that made me slightly uneasy. The others followed my lead and arranged themselves around the room.

"All right, let's get some meet and greet going up in this heezy. I'm Lyle, and it's pretty much WYSIWYG... "what you see is what you get. " I've been here at the Goog for four years, working on seven projies en este momento." I stared at Lyle in astonishment, was he really like this all the time? I looked at his earnest face and figured he must be. This was going to be interesting.

"Wow, seven projects?" Billy, I believe his name was asked, impressed.

"Hey, they ask, and I do's it." He made wild hand gestures as he spoke, something that made me amused, he just seemed really nervous. "What can I say, I'm a people pleaser, especially the ladies." He turned to Neha and smiled at her, leaning in a bit. "My Mercedes. So it's all good in Lyle's hood, you heard?"

Stuart seemed to have reached the end of his patience with poor Lyle. "Uh, yeah, is Lyle always gonna be referring to himself in the third person? 'Cause if he is, I might want to punch Lyle in the face."

I turned to him and punched him on the shoulder. "Don't listen to him Lyle he's just jealous your face isn't surgically attached to your phone." Stuart sneered at me and did in fact go back to his phone, making me roll my eyes.

"Okay, tough but fair. Good note. Lyle's still a little nervous. Shh... Uh, first-time manager; Lyle's a first-time... I'm gonna stop doing that. I'm gonna cut it out. Keep it to first and second person. Who's next?"

I was then introduced to Yo-yo, Billy, Nick and Neha. None of these people were really who I wanted on my team and I found myself more and more annoyed at Graham and how he ruined my chances to find a good team, one that didn't have the two oldies in. I didn't listen to anything anyone else was saying, just staring at the two old men in annoyance. I stopped only when Stuart starting waving his hand in front of my face.

"You okay?" He asked. I blinked and nodded, standing up and following the rest of them to wherever we were going. Stuart continued looking at me until we were sat down until his phone beeped and he went back to it. The lecture that we were attending turned out to be about code, something I was already very familiar with, I payed attention to it just in case there was something I didn't know.

I knew all of it.

I turned my attention back to Stuart, studying his features, my eyes drawn to the little mole on his cheek. The more I stared at it, the more I found it adorable.

Holy shit.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

After the seminar we were free to leave, I left quickly deciding not to stop and chat to my new team because I wanted to get to terms with my new discovery. I headed down to the nearest café and sat down, putting my head onto my folded arms and letting out a sigh. This was going to complicate things.

But it didn't have to.

I felt as though a light went off in my brain, I could just pretend like nothing changed. It was only a little attraction. I could have smacked myself in the face for acting so childish about something so simple but that was the only way I was able to deal with it. I was awkward that way.

That was my new course of action, to pretend like I felt nothing. Perfect. The waitress wandered over with a pencil behind her ear and smiled at me. "Hello, what can I get you?"

I hadn't even looked at the menu. I grasped it in front of me and ordered the first thing I saw which was tomato soup. Luckily I quite liked tomato soup. I leaned against the headrest behind me, the leathery seat was starting to stick to my legs because it was quite warm in here and when I moved slightly I could feel my skin peel off it.

Lovely.

While I was preoccupied with this I didn't notice someone sit in front of me until his stupid mouth started talking. "Nice to see you again."

I looked up, startled before I groaned in annoyance. "Go away."

Graham smirked at me and reached over to grab a menu. "I don't think so sweetheart." His eyes skimmed over the text before he placed it back down and reached over in an attempt to grab my hand. I swatted him away and crossed my arms over my chest before glaring at him.

"Get lost Graham. I don't want to talk to you."

"And why is that?"

I snorted and quickly pretended I didn't when the waitress came back over with my soup and smiled at Graham before asking what he wanted. "He's not staying." I told her before he could open his mouth. She looked a bit startled as I interrupted but I think woman's intuition kicked in and she realized that he was irritating me.

"Okay, if you need anything sweetie just shout." She winked at me and walked back behind the counter to serve some of the other customers.

I turned back to Graham to see him with his elbows on the table with his fingers pressed together, smirking at me from behind them. "I wanted to let you know that you're not going to win with the team you're on."

"I can win no matter what team I'm on." I snapped back, completely ignoring the soup in front of me in favour of glaring at him again.

He grinned, teeth showing. "No you can't but I think we can come to some sort of arrangement."

I leant backwards again, completely confused. "What are you talking about? You're not exactly high up, you can't do anything."

"No." He agreed. "But I can make sure that you still come out of it unscathed. You can still join my team, I'll talk to Chetty, get him to agree."

I started laughing. "Do you even hear yourself? You're delusional." I stood up before he could reply. "And my team will beat yours."

The next morning was a complete disaster. I had trouble remembering my other team member's names and that wasn't even the worst part. It started with Chetty giving us our first assignment. I was sat in the office with my team when the computer next to us turned on and Chetty's face appeared. "Good morning, interns." He greeted. "Today marks the first of several challenges through which your team will show their merits. While internally dogfooding a new products, a number of Googlers reported a bug that disabled their audio. All two million lines of that code are in the source files. Your job: find the bug."

That sounded simple enough. I stood up from my seat to follow the others towards some computers next to a big see through board that we were able to write on. We all started throwing out strategies about how we were going to find the bug but what I was most interested in was how the two older men were going about solving the problem.

"Code, right? Codes."

"So at the end of the day, we're looking to kind of break the password here right?"

"Maybe the answer's in the question. Maybe it's something with bug."

Billy snapped his fingers. "Eureka."

"Bug like fly."

"The Fly."

"Jesus Christ." I moaned, trying my best to ignore their rambling and focused on the line of code that I was writing that would be correct for audio. I was trying my best to continue but Nick tapped me on the shoulder one too many times and I turned around ready to shout at him.

Billy got in there before I could. "It boggles my mind that no one has a notebook out. You guys are focused on writing this gibberish. Maybe that's helpful, maybe it's not, but I guarantee you that what we're saying is helpful."

"It's really not." I snapped, having enough of Billy speaking and Nick nodding frantically behind him.

"Guy's we're looking for a bug, not a password. They're different things." I turned back around to continue writing my contribution feeling as though I was getting somewhere, the problem was that I could still hear the two idiots behind me talking about a fly as though that was the answer we were looking for.

Neha had had enough as well it seems. "Would you please stop?"

"No, we're working."

"No we're working." She snapped back, turning around with her hands on hips and mouth set in a determined frown.

Stuart noticed the pen Billy was holding and snorted. "Yeah, and that's a Sharpie by the way, genius."

Billy looked down and frowned. "That's my fault." He licked his finger and tried to wipe off what he'd written. "Go ahead and wash that."

"Look, guys, I'm sorry." Neha began. "You're not helping. You're just saying a lot of words really fast that mean nothing. To find the bug, we need to scan the user logs and review the code until we find the programmer's mistake. It's the only way." She was a lot more patient than I would have been, had to give the girls props for that.

"Except what if it's not the only way?" Billy questioned.

"It is." I snorted.

"Okay, you said that someone programmed it. That means some person in this building wrote that code."

"A human being." Nick added unhelpfully.

"Let's just give him a name and call him Tony."

"Tony." Nick repeated. I was close to banging my head on this board just so that I would have something better to listen to.

"Let's say Tony likes kayaking. All of a sudden me and Nick become friends with Tony; we're throwing a few beers back. We're doing a little kayaking-" Billy continued to drone on but at this point I'd stopped listening and I'd also dropped the illusion that I was. I went over to a computer and pulled up Ajax, a coding program that would help me solve the problem.

It wasn't until I heard Stuart agree that I tuned back in. "Dark and stormy, feeling us."

"Yeah, no, feeling you big-time, buddy." Stuart nodded his head and did a half smile. I may not have known him long but I knew enough about people to know that he was not being sincere. "You know what, in fact, why don't the two of you guys right now go and find the programmer." I gaped at him, that was not cool.

There was no way that they would ever be able to find the guy and even if they could it still wasn't going to help us because this isn't what Chetty wants us to do. I almost opened my mouth to say something, but I didn't.

I watched as the rest of the team joined in with coming up with outrageous things that the programmer looked like until they came up with a knock of Professor X from X-men and with that the two idiots ran off to find him.

"I can't believe they fell for that." I groaned and leant my head on the counter, feeling another body sit down on the chair next to me.

"At least we can work in peace now." Neha said, sitting down on a different bench.

Yo-yo started typing immediately whilst simultaneously saying what he was doing which was annoying but actually quite helpful so that we could all do different things at once. Stuart was the one who had decided to sit next to me and he looked at what I was doing.

"Whoa you work fast."

"That's because I left those two to it and decided to get to work instead of making up shit to get rid of them."

Stuart scoffed at me. "It's notlike you wanted them here either."

I glared at him in annoyance. "They're still part of the team."

He rolled his eyes. "No they're not."

"You're such a dick."

Neha looked over at the two of us and sneered. "Can you two please not do this right now, we need to stay focused. We're already at a disadvantage." She spun around on her chair to look at Yo-yo. "Where are we at on ensuring it wasn't a networking issue?"

He continued to type as he replied to her. "Confirmed there was no packet lost. Almost done checking on whether the encryption had the wrong certificate."

She snorted. "I'm sorry almost?" She raised an eyebrow and frowned. "Uh you're either done or you're not. You can't be almost pregnant."

"Yeah, hey, she would know guys." Stuart smirked at her before sending me a small glance when he thought I wasn't looking. I turned away from him as he was still being a dick and looked through the code in front of me. This was going to take forever.

Neha and Stuart started bickering and I just could not deal with this at the moment, already feeling my eyes start to strain from reading the text. You would think they would be used to it by now but nope.

I blinked sharply and opened them again quickly when I heard "What the fuck was that?"

"I was punishing myself for my inferior performance." Yo-yo was turning about to be no-no.

"That's great." Stuart mocked. "We got crazy over here and crazy horny over there." He turned to look at me but before he could say anything Neha snapped back at him which made them have another argument.

Just. Fucking. Great.

"Can you both shut up!" I snapped. "I cannot be dealing with this right now, can we just get our shit together and start doing this for real otherwise Graham the fucking Brit is gonna win this and I do not want to deal with his smug ass any more than I have to." By the end of this rant I was breathing heavily and the other three were staring at me.

"Great, and she's PMS'ing."

"Ugh." At least he made this pretending I didn't find him attractive thing quite easy.


End file.
